From Office Suite to Business Suite

Posted on October 9, 2006 ·

Zoho is definitely getting an increasing share of attention. No wonder – they are releasing product updates at a rate others do press releases. The introduction of a single sign-on to six of their Office 2.0 applications generated quite some buzz on a normally silent weekend. TechCrunch, ZDNet, Read/Write Web, AccMan Pro, yours truly – the usual suspects, one might say, but when “good-old-fashioned” ex-Gartner Vinnie Mirchandani pays attention, you know something is brewing here.

But let’s look a bit further, and we’ll find that Zoho has a few more tricks in their hat. Near-term we can expect a web-based version of Virtual Office, a communication/collaboration solution (think Outlook), which really makes the Office / Productivity suite full-rounded.

How about transactional business systems? Zoho has a CRM solution – big deal, one might say, the market is saturated with CRM solutions. However, what Zoho has here goes way beyond the scope of traditional CRM: they support Sales Order Management, Procurement, Inventory Management, Invoicing – to this ex-ERP guy it appears Zoho has the makings of a CRM+ERP solution, under the disguise of the CRM label.

Think about it. All they need is the addition Accounting, and Zoho can come up with an unparalleled Small Business Suite, which includes the productivity suite (what we now consider the Office Suite) and all process-driven, transactional systems: something like NetSuite + Microsoft, targeted for SMB’s.

(Disclaimer: although I have an advisory relationship with Zoho, the above is purely my own speculation)

I just want to add. Couple of month ago I was in search of the phone and fax service that I can manage myself and be able to forward all my customers calls to where I am. Now after I signed up with Ring Central http://deccod.com/RingCentral_Review.aspx I am forwarding my main business line to my house if i am at home, to my cell when I am on the road or I can transfer all calls to my assistant while on vacation. This staff works great! The cost is $24.99/month and I’ve got free 800 numbers plus free 866 fax number. Also if you sitting in front of computer it will notify you about who is calling through little applet and you can decide how to manage your call. This service has all the futures of fancy PBX for the fraction of the cost. They have a free trial and there is no obligation. I wrote a little review here http://deccod.com/RingCentral_Review.aspx

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[…] the Zoho brand was hardly known, and only for the Office suite. Here’s what I wrote in From Office Suite to Business Suite, back in October 2006: How about transactional business systems? Zoho has a CRM solution – big […]

[…] the Zoho brand was hardly known, and only for the Office suite. Here’s what I wrote in From Office Suite to Business Suite, back in October 2006: How about transactional business systems? Zoho has a CRM solution – big […]